"Surge igitur et fac et erit Dominus tecum” PUBLISHED UNDER THE SUPERINTENDENCE OF THE ECCLESIOLOGICAL LATE CAMBRIDGE CAMDEN SOCIETY VOLUME XIV LONDON JOSEPH MASTERS ALDERSGATE STREET AND NEW BOND STREET MDCCCLIII HARYARD COLLEGE NOV 27 1911 LIBRARY Treat fund LONDON: PRINTED BY JOSEPH MASTERS AND CO., 8265 35-1 THE ECCLESIOLOGIST. "Surge igitur et fac: et erit Dominus tecum." No. XCIV.-FEBRUARY, 1853. (NEW SERIES, NO. LVIII.) ELY CATHEDRAL. We take advantage of the publication, by the Dean of Ely, of further particulars of the great works in progress under his care in that cathedral, to give our readers some account of what has been done there since our last paper on the subject. The greater part of the restorations then in progress have so far advanced that the choir has been for some months re-opened for Divine Service. And it would be difficult to speak too highly of the dignity and beauty of the choir of Ely, even in its present incomplete state. The choir, as our readers are aware, is now brought down to the western extremity of the eastern arm of the great cross; and the new open screen, of Mr. Scott's design, which we noticed in October 1851, separates it from the octagon. We retain our before expressed opinion that this screen, beautiful and elaborate as it is both in design and execution, is not thoroughly satisfactory, either ritually or aesthetically. Forming, as it does in fact, a pendant to the stalls of Alan de Walsingham, it ought surely to have imitated more closely the precise character of their design. The style of the screen is, however, far more luxuriant and intricate than that of the stalls; which, rich as they are, seem by comparison simple and austere in contrast with the screen-work which unites them at the western end of the choir. The many niches of the new screen are still untenanted; so that an effect of still greater complication may be expected. We fear much that the statues for the screen, when completed, will appear small in scale, when compared with the bas-reliefs intended to fill the panels below the canopies of the stalls. We should very much have preferred a generally simpler treatment for the screen, with statues of larger size and forming a main part, rather than an accessory, of the design. The screen was crying out for partial colouring and gilding when we last saw it, and it had not even yet received its brass gates. |